The Luminaries is a 2013 novel by Eleanor Catton, winner of the Booker Prize. Set during the New Zealand gold rush of the 1860s, it begins when Walter Moody, a visitor to the town of Hokitika, stumbles into a hotel smoking room where twelve men are already gathered. At first, Moody thinks the twelve are strangers. However, it soon becomes clear that the men, who come from many nationalities and walks of life, convened there on purpose to investigate several interlocking mysteries. The solutions to these mysteries and their implications form the rest of the novel.
Examples
- Anachronic Order: The first three chapters unfold chronologically, though with liberal flashbacks. In chapter four, the narrative begins bouncing back and forth between the events in Hokitika and Anna's arrival in New Zealand the year prior. Starting in chapter five, the rest of the book narrates the leadup to the shocking events of January 14th, which preciptate the meeting that opens the book.
- And the Adventure Continues: Chronologically, the last event in the book is Walter Moody finally setting out for the goldfields.
- Arc Number: Twelve.
- The novel has twelve chapters.
- The twelve men in the Crown smoking room each correspond to one of the twelve signs of the Zodiac.
- The total value of Crosbie's gold is 4,096 pounds, or 2 to the power of 12.
- Armor-Piercing Question: "Are you avenging yourself upon the man who killed your father, or the man who refused to come to your aid outside the White Horse Saloon?"
- Awful Wedded Life: Lydia Greenway proposes marriage to Crosbie Wells after he wins her rigged roulette wheel and she lacks the money to pay his jackpot. Their marriage is icy from the start, and only gets worse when Crosbie strikes gold and Lydia conspires to steal it with her true love Frank Carver.
- From what we see of George and Margaret Shepard's marriage, it's not much better. George, who feels nothing for Margaret, only married her because he felt vaguely responsible for the death of her first husband, his brother Jeremy.
- Bastard Angst: Crosbie Wells initially laments that, simply because he is a shameful reminder of infidelity, he must live in poverty while his legitimate half-brother gets to be a man of wealth and means. He gets over it eventually.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Lydia Greenway/Wells/Carver. She looks for lost girls fresh off the boat in Dunedin, shows them kindness and hospitality, then forces them into sex work to make up for the "debt" they owe her.
- Blithe Spirit: Emery Staines finds joy in everything, even when he's being taken for a ride by con artists or nearly dying of an opium overdose.
- Break the Cutie: Poor Anna is subjected to this from the moment she arrives in New Zealand. She's taken in by Lydia's schemes, addicted to opium, arrested repeatedly, and subjected to the unwanted attentions of multiple Abhorrent Admirers.
- Chekhov's Skill: Inverted — here, it's Chekhov's lack of a skill. Walter gets Anna acquitted on her most serious charge, forgery, by reminding the court that Anna can't read or write. She could only reproduce Emery's signature because of their mystical connection, which would hardly hold up in a court of law.
- Contrived Coincidence: Being an attempt to write a Victorian novel in the 21st century, the story purposely relies on several coincidences. In particular, the entire backstory about the planetary characters is made of Dickensian coincidences. Lydia and Carver plot to blackmail a politician using gold they unknowingly stole from the politician's half-brother, and the mystical connection between Anna and Emery comes from them having been born at the exact same moment.
- Moody only learns that Crosbie Wells and Alistair Lauderback were half-brothers because the wrong trunk gets delivered to his hotel room.
- Decoy Protagonist: Walter Moody is set up to be the hero, but he's ultimately peripheral to the action, except during the courtroom drama. The true protagonists, if there are any, are Anna Wetherell and Emery Staines, who are also the title characters.
- This may be an homage to Wilkie Collins (see Shout-Out below) whose novel The Woman in White also features a Decoy Protagonist named Walter.
- Disappeared Dad: Walter has come to New Zealand in search of his.
- Eloquent in My Native Tongue: Ah Sook barely speaks English, and Ah Quee speaks none at all. But when their Cantonese conversations are rendered in English for the reader, they're both quite articulate.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Dick Mannering is hardly a hero, but even he draws the line at a mob beating up Quee Long just because they were looking for a different Chinese man.
- Everyone Can See It: Cowell Devlin figures out that Anna and Emery are lovers by the way they turn toward each other while sleeping, even while shackled in a jailhouse.
- Gold Digger: In a novel full of literal gold diggers, Lydia Greenway stands out as an exemplar of the figurative sense. She doesn't just want Crosbie's gold, she wants it as part of an elaborate scheme to make her real lover captain of a merchant ship.
- Good Shepherd: Devlin genuinely believes in his mission to minister to the criminals of Hokitika.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: None of the characters are wholly good or evil. The most heroic figures have flaws, like Moody's vanity, Tauwhare's arrogance, Staines's naivete, and Yongsheng's inability to let go. Meanwhile, many of the villains are given positive qualities, such as Francis and Lydia's apparently genuine love for each other, and Alistair Lauderback having planned to apologize to his brother Crosbie Wells for never writing him back.
- Hopeless Suitor: Poor Edgar Clinch has absolutely no chance with Anna once Emery re-enters her life.
- Aubert Gascoigne thinks he has a shot with Lydia Wells until he learns she's engaged to Francis Carver.
- Horrible Judge of Character: Everyone who trusts Francis Carver for any length of time, from Sook's father all the way down to Pritchard and Tauwhare.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Downplayed. Alistair Lauderback seems like an archetypal Sleazy Politician. However, while "heart of gold" may be pushing it, we later learn that he always intended to write back to Crosbie, but couldn't overcome the shame of having failed to do so already.
- Karma Houdini: George Shepard gets his fancy new jail, and faces no consequences for blackmailing Harald Nilssen or gunning down Sook Yongsheng. Sure, he's stuck in a loveless marriage out of a sense of duty, but that's a worse deal for Margaret than for him.
- Killed Offscreen: Francis Carver has his head bashed in before he can be locked up for his crimes. It's all but stated that Te Rau Tauwhare is the killer, being the only living character absent from the courtroom at the time.
- Magic Realism: Understated, but much of the story turns on the fact that Emery Staines and Anna Wetherell, born at the exact same moment, share an empathic link that causes them to feel each other's pain. Though it's the only supernatural point in the entire book, it causes the events that lead to the Crown meeting, which in turn lead to the rest of the plot.
- Meaningless Villain Victory: All of Francis Carver's plotting had one aim: steal one of Alistair Lauderback's ships. He barely captains it for a year before it runs aground on the reef outside Hokitika.
- Multinational Team: They're not exactly a "team," but the Crown men hail from all over the world — Ireland, Norway, France, Prussia, China, New Zealand, and others are represented.
- Nice Guy: Benjamin Lowenthal is an oddity among the Crown men, having no dark secrets, no tragic past, no mean streak, and a job he loves (he remarks that the newspaper industry is ideal for an observant Jew, since nobody expects a paper on the day after the Sabbath).
- Odd Friendship: Te Rau Tauwhare, a vigorous Maori greenstone hunter, forms one with Crosbie Wells, an alcoholic hermit cutting timber on what used to be Maori land.
- The Reveal: The story of what actually happened on the 14th of January 1866 is related in the very last chapter heading, which is longer than the chapter itself.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: The end of Sook Yongsheng's quest for revenge against Francis Carver. He's shot dead by George Shepard without ever confronting Carver in person.
- Shout-Out: One of the sailors on Godspeed is named W. Collins, likely after Wilkie Collins, the Victorian novelist who wrote works very similar to The Luminaries.
- You Killed My Father: Francis Carver didn't personally kill Sook Yongsheng's father, but he did set up him to die, storing crates of opium in his warehouse at a time when smuggling carried a death sentence. Ah Sook only finds out about Carver's role fifteen years later, and vows bloody revenge.
